Washboard International

The very existence of washboard International, and whoever owns the Washboard.com domain, is music to this Junkmaster's ears. I find my way to this article and discover the source of conceptual resonance that makes me so in tune with the art and joy of washboarding:

"These lucky enlistees have joined Washboards International...They do not pay dues -- 'Nah, no one's ever gonna pay me,' he (Mike Johnson, he whom we must thank for the very existence of Washboards International) says fatalistically -- and get, for their non-existent ante, a couple of bumper stickers. But bonds between washboard players run deeper than that. Or else, Johnson muses, they are more shallow. 'It's not a terribly complex instrument,' Johnson admits. 'You just get one and figure it out."

Yeah. That's the ticket. That's the junky approach to sports and art and music and anything you think you're not good enough to play. You just get the junk, and figure it out - the kind of sound you want to make, the kind of music you want to play, the kind of rhythm that makes you dance.

Junkyard Puppies

A Junkyard Puppy, at last. Ever since the advent of Junkyard Sports in my life, I have been veritably plagued with queries regarding the Junkyard Sports Junkyard Dog-equivalent. Behold. The Junkyard Puppy. One of many Junkyard Puppies, in fact, created by a group of folk artists who call themselves the Yardbirds. The disclaimer: "Every Junkyard Puppy Metal Sculpture is handmade in Kentucky by YardBirds. That means each one varies slightly from the other in its handcrafted appearance and attitude. All of the Junkyard Puppies are made with bare metal and naturally rust with age. That's their beauty!"

Junkyard Puppies. So much like people, you know - varying slightly in appearance and attitude, naturally rusting with age.

Floorball

It's a lot like hockey with a whiffle ball and without the skates. You have a hockey-like stick. You have a whiffle ball. You're trying to get the ball into a hockey-like goal, passed the hockey-like goalie, who is kneeling. You are not, however, allowed to:

- hold, check, block or trip an opponent,
- hit, block, lift, push down or kick an opponents stick,
- hit the ball with the stick or foot above knee level,
- lift the stick above waist height,
- kick the ball twice.
- touch ball with hand
- jump up to reach ball
- passing stick between players legs
- play if body parts, other than feet, come in contact with floor.

It was, according to Floorball USA, played in Sweden in the early 1970s, and now attracts 1.5 million players world-wide. It was invented as a sport that could be played by both sexes, together. I just hope it stays that way.

Edible Trivia

This is not just a box of Pringles. It's a box of Printed Pringles (or, as their manufacturers prefer to call them, "Pringle Prints"). Yes, with the new Pringle Printer Technology, you can now eat anyone else's words. And they'll crunch in your mouth, too.

But what practical application could such a comparatively trivial accomplishment have in the real world? I need only turn to the Junk Food News to discover that "P&G" (yes, as in Proctor and Gamble, "leader and founder of the stacked crisp category") is teaming up with Hasbro, Inc. (NYSE: HAS), a worldwide leader in children's and family leisure time entertainment products, to use questions and answers from Trivial Pursuit Junior. Pringles Prints will feature 2,400 fun trivia questions and answers from six different Trivial Pursuit Junior categories (Today & Tomorrow, Music, Movies, Nature, Yesterday and Whatever) randomly printed on the potato crisps. Pringles Prints Trivial Pursuit Junior will be available nationwide in August 2004. Additionally, Pringles Prints Fun Facts, Animal Facts and Jokes will become available in select U.S. retail locations in June and July 2004."

Hmm. What about Politically Printed Pringle Prints? Party-specific Printed Pringle Prints? Or Plain Polemical Printed Pringle Prints? Printed Pringle Prints Study Guides (eat your way to that A)? Printed Pringle Prints Bomb-Building Guides?

All About Balls

All About Balls is a website that is basically all about, um, balls. Balls, you say? Balls, in deed. As a random illustration, we take from the first and last listings on their page "All Balls A-Z": abacus balls, aeolipile, Akuballs, animal balls, animal pellets, antenna balls, art balls, Atomium, ball and chain, ball art, ball avalanches, ball baths, ball bombardment, ball cannon, ball chairs, ball clocks, ball games, ball garlands, ball gloves, ball icons, ball jokes, ball kites...udang sapudi, Uncle Joe's Mint Balls, unihockey balls, vomit balls, waterpolo balls, wax balls, wind balls, workout balls, yoga balls, Zip-n-Hit balls, zorb balls, Zwetschkenknödel

What, for example, you might blamelessly ask, is an "aeolipile?" Interestingly enough, it is the first working steam engine, made, obviously, "of a metal ball mounted on a sealed pot (boiler) by an axial shaft, having two curved outlet tubes to produce a rotary motion from the escaping steam."

Stumbling across the James Burke-ian collection of all things ball, was for me almost exacerbatingly fortuitous after having spent an hour with Mick Greene of Streetplay playing most therapeutic game of Fivebox in a Nashville parking lot with his puzzlingly underappreciated Spaldeen of wonderful bounce and pop.


Thanks for the find Presurfer

Bankshot - sports for everybody

tIn his article, "The Bankshot Conception of Universal Design," Dr. Reeve Brenner says some things about sports and differently-abled people that explain a lot of the passion behind the Junkyard Sports idea. It's written in support of an other "equipment-based" solution called "Bankshot."

Tennis is exclusionary and conducing to separate-but-equal at its most extreme. It is possible for wheelchair athletes to play against each other on that court. It is possible for able-bodied people to play against each other on that court. But even able-bodied people can not all play tennis on the same level. A tennis player must find the very small sliver of the population with whom to play. The wheelchair athlete cannot play with the able-bodied except artificially in organized pre-arranged circumstances – but never spontaneously.

It's the same vision of "sports for everybody" that I was describing when I wrote "Extra Special Olympics." Bankshot is a working, challenging, cross-ability solution that combines miniature golf with a series of basketball and/or tennis and maybe even pitching goals.

Bankshot basketball is a new game of skill and challenge that is often described as a "mini golf, but with a basketball." Players of all ages and abilities, even disabled participants, proceed through a course of angled, curved and non-conventionally configured brightly colored backboards, banking shots off the Bankboards(TM) and through the rims... Bankshot is non-aggressive and entirely inclusionary.

A Bankshot course consists of a varying number of stations-depending upon the size of the court-each with a uniquely shaped Bankboard. Each Bankshot requires a different banked shot to score. Some shots demand carroms off two backboards, some are ricochets and one diabolically maddening shot has three backboards and two rims. Players use a scorecard to track their score as they shoot increasingly difficult shots at each of the stations.

And it's a better world because of it.

YELLOWARROW

Think of it as YELLOWARROW: [NOUN] A COLLECTIVE SYMBOL FOR PERSONAL COMOMUNICATION. [VERB]TO LEAVE AND DISCOVER MESSAGES POINTING OUT WHAT COUNTS.

Say it out loud a few times. YELLOWARROW. Kinda trips off the virtual.

Learn even more about YELLOWARROW on the YELLOWARROW blog. You can get your ARROWS - numbered arrow-shaped stickers. For apparently free. Email YELLOWARROW - or send even a text message - about where you put your yellow arrow, and why. Tell them about other yellow arrow stickers you find. Send in a picture. learn more.



Thanks Noise.

Wacky Australian Sports

One of the best ways to bring a little light-heartedness to the competitve spirit is by creating contests that are too silly to take seriously. Even if you get a trophy for winning the foot-powered scooter race, it's just not the kind of thing you'd put on your resumé.

Apparently, this has reached a level of fine art in Australia. Here, from Wacky Australian Sports are some heart-lightening examples:

The Great Country Music Duck Race, Tamworth, NSW. Numbered plastic ducks float down the Peel River to a finish line during Tamworth Country Music Festival

Queenscliff Scooter Challenge, from Pt Lonsdale lighthouse to Queenscliff Post Office, Vic. Riders on foot-powered scooters race over a 12km course

Compass Cup Cow Races, at Mt Compass, SA: Dairy cows become mounts for "jockeys", assisted by "urgers" who help them stay aboard. Second Sunday in February

Millthorpe Murphy Marathon, Millthorpe NSW. Contestants carry a 50kg bag of potatoes in a 1610-metre race. Lots of other potato contests including the longest-peel.

International Kite Festival, Semaphore Beach, Adelaide. A free event showcasing big kites, small kites, art kites, sport kites, kite buggying and kite surfing.

Bylong Mouse Races,27th March 2004 - Bylong NSW. Eleven-race program ending with the Bylong Cup. BYO mouse or race one of the ones provided. Lots more entertainment. Late April.

World Championship Egg Throwing Competition, Taylors Arm, NSW. A thrower pitches eggs 40-metres over the roof of the original "Pub with No Beer", celebrated in Slim Dusty’s song, and the catcher tries to catch it without breaking it. Sunday after Mothers’ Day.

Pinnacle Guinea Pig Races, at Pinnacle, NSW. Sprints and hurdle races for guinea pigs. June long weekend and Easter

Black Rock Stakes, Pilbara WA. A Pub to Port wheelbarrow race that runs over more than 100km! Wheelbarrows may be modified, but must have headlights and red tail lights. A full weekend of fun

Cane Toad Racing, Maclean Cane Harvest Festival, Maclean, NSW. Snails will compete if toads not available. Lots of other activities and displays. Late June

Lions Camel Cup Carnival, Alice Springs, NT. Program of camel races, followed by pocamelo (polo on camels)

Darwin Beer Can Regatta, Darwin, NT. Boats built from drink cans battle it out for line honors off Mindil Beach near town

Giant Platypus Throwing, Nymboida Heritage Festival, NSW. Competitors take turns to throw a giant plastic platypus as far as they can. Lots of other activities. End of August

World Lizard Racing Championships, Eulo, Qld. Held at a specially-built racetrack. The event starts with a lizard auction and features a five-race program.

Sorbent Australian Dunny Derby, Winton, Qld. Enthroned "dunny jockeys" are pulled along in outhouses on wheels. Every second year in September. The festival includes the Crayfish Derby.

The Great Pram Battle, Yulara, NT. Each team of four runners pushes a "baby", minimum age 18. around the Yulara resort’s ring road

Rydges Henley-on-Todd Regatta, Alice Springs. Human horsepower propels bottomless boats along a dry riverbed.

Back to Bowra Festival, Bowraville, NSW. Billycart races, gumboot throwing, Mullins Mail Ride, whip-cracking, one arm wheelbarrow race, egg throwing. October long weekend.

The Art of Puzzle Design

My friend Scott Kim calls himself a "Puzzle Master." Try to solve one of his exemplary puzzles, like his Double Maze, and the legitimacy of his claim becomes self-evident.

Scott has put together a collection of articles on The Art of Puzzle Design. These articles are, for the most part, exceptionally clear, insightful and intelligent. For example, in the first article,What is a Puzzle, Scott presents a simple puzzle, and then describes what makes the puzzle fun. His concise analysis goes beyond puzzles, to almost anything we find fascinating enough to explore:

Novel. Puzzles are a form of play. And play starts by suspending the rules of everyday life, giving us permission to do things that are not practical. Folded letters certainly don’t have any practical value. They take something familiar and give it a novel twist – a good way of inviting you to be playful.

Not too easy, not too hard. Puzzles that are too easy are disappointing; puzzles that are too hard are discouraging. You know there are only 26 letters in the alphabet, so it seems that this puzzle can’t be too difficult. In fact this puzzle is hard enough that many people never get the answer. Nonetheless, the perceived lack of difficulty helps keeps you interested.

Tricky. To solve this puzzle you must change how you interpret the picture. Personally, I enjoy puzzles that involve such perceptual shifts.

Fun Remembered

PASSAGE #1:

From Don Dellillo's "Underworld"

"How we used to scavenge. We turned junk into games. Gouging cork out of bottle caps. I don't even remember what we used it for. Cork, rubber bands, tin cans, half a skate, old linoleum that we cut up and used in carpet guns.... How children adapt to available surfaces, using curbstones, stoops and manhole covers. How they take the pockmarked world and turn a delicate inversion, making something brainy and rule-bound and smooth and then spend the rest of their lives trying to repeat the process."

PASSAGE #2:

From Sarah Vowell's "The Partly Cloudy Patriot" (on finding the point in the primordial pointlessness of play... Pop-a-Shot, by the way, is an arcade game in which you try to shoot as many mini basketballs as you can in 40 seconds)

"I think Pot-a-Shot's a baby game. That's why I love it. Unlike the game of basketball itself, Pop-A-Shot has no standard socially redeeming value whatsoever. Pop-A-Shot is not about teamwork or getting along or working together. Pop-A-Shot is not about getting exercise or fresh air. It takes place in fluorescent-lit bowling alleys or darkened bars. It costs money. At the end of a game, one does not swig Gatorade. One sips bourbon or mararitas or munches cupcakes… In other words, Pop-A-Shot has no point at all. And that, for me, is the point. My life is full of points – the deadlines and bills and recycling and phone calls. I have come to appreciate, to depend on, this one dumb-ass little passion. Because every time a basketball slides off my fingertips and drops perfectly, flawlessly, into that hole, well, swish, happiness found."


from Christopher Noxon

cinemasports

"Cinemasports is the iron chef of filmmaking. Each cinemasports day starts with the announcement of 'ingredients.' Teams have 9 hours to complete a movie with those ingredients. Screening of finished movies starts on the 10th hour. For Example, can different teams make a 4 minute movie in 9Hrs that includes an onion, an English teacher, and a tattoo parlor? We explore how the same ingredients inspire different creative minds."

Though the name "cinemasports" harkens to things like Theater Sports, it is everso junkyardly in spirit and concept. Here, for example, is an example:

Include the following elements in the days movie:
1. Someone is approached by a stranger claiming to be a lost relative.
2. Someone peels an orange
3. A shot of a bare knee
4. Someone mentions hair transplants in conversation.

Which, in a junkyard sports parallel, might read:

Include the following elements in a game of soccer:
1. The Sunday Times
2. 13 assorted singleton socks
3. An alley
4. 14 players ranging in age from 3-47, one of whom is blind

It is, after all, all one game.



Thanks Noise